Cloud (2025) - Movie Review

The Movie: Cloud

The Director: Kiyoshi Kurosawa

The Cast: Masaki Suda, Kotone Furukawa, Daiken Okudaira, Amane Okayama, Yoshiyoshi Arakawa, Masataka Kubota, Masaaki Akahori, Maho Yamada, Mutsuo Yoshioka, Yugo Mikawa, Toshihiro Yashiba, Yoshiyuki Morishita, Tetsuya Chiba, Yutaka Matsushige

The Story: Yoshii, a young man who resells goods online, finds himself at the center of a series of mysterious events that put his life at risk.

The Rating: 7 / 10

The Review:

To start off, I would definitely call this movie a psychological thriller well above and beyond it being an action movie although there is one sequence that is pretty actiony so take that for what it is. Unfortunately, before watching the movie, my brain attached itself to a lot of the review quotes hailing it as a great action movie so I had to sort of recalibrate as the movie unfolded and now also as I'm writing this review so I don't end up selling it short of what it is. Sometimes marketing can be a little misleading, especially if a studio is only shooting for first weekend box office numbers so always keep that in mind.

Is the movie good? Yes, absolutely. I really love the rabbit hole element of this movie and director Kiyoshi Kurosawa doesn't just throw you down into it, he slowly has you weave back and forth as the story and the characters all unravel in very surprising ways. I also really love how no one is really who they seem to be and their motivations only become apparent during big plot twist moments which really kept me engaged into what was going on which is a real key this type of movie's effectiveness. If you're not paying attention, you're going to miss a lot and the third act won't be nearly as rewarding.

I know for some people, paying attention all the way through a movie can be a challenge but, believe me, the experience is well worth it, especially with a movie like this. Every conversation that is had between every character is important and, even stuff that happens at the very beginning that you will most likely forget about halfway through, suddenly come back up and you're like, hey WTF! And I mean that in a good way. The way Kurosawa brings everything together for the explosive final sequences is quite brilliant and is some of the best cinematic storytelling I've seen in a while.

Masaki Suda is on screen for almost the entire movie as the lead character Ryôsuke Yoshii and he's really good all the way through. The way he plays the character is pitch perfect as a man who ends up stumbling through and into some very unlikely situations as things just keep getting worse and worse for him. Yoshii's resolve and determination to create a better world for himself, even if it's not always the best decision, is at the heart of what keeps the story moving forward and without Suda's performance, I'm not sure if the movie would work nearly as well as it does.

Overall, the movie is just really smart storytelling all the way around and I just loved all the fun surprises. Kurosawa seems to have a very unique perspective both on life and on filmmaking and watching this movie makes me want to dive into his catalog to check out some of his most well known titles like Cure and Pulse which seem to always get high praise. Cloud may not be big, blockbuster style filmmaking, which isn't a bad thing at all, but it's definitely a movie that is worth supporting, especially while it's in theaters.